Refinishing a chair

The perfectionist in me still isn't thrilled with how this turned out, but it was fun little project with decent end results.

Let me start off with a little background info.  Before moving to this current house (Yuma base housing), we had our nice wooden computer desk in our spare room.  This house came with a built-in computer desk that is in the landing at the top of the stairs and with a smaller spare room, we decided to put our computer there and store the desk for now.  While it's not a bad little computer nook, the location is awful and I can't think of another way to use that built-in desk and not have it look out of place.  It's the first thing you seen when you walk up the stairs.  Until now, I've had a blue fabric-upholstered office chair at the desk - while comfortable and functional, it's not exactly what I want to look at the back of every time I go up the stairs.  For a while, I've been thinking of how nice it would be to get a nicer chair to put at the computer desk.

While at Goodwill on Friday, I found this cute chair that looked like it had a lot of potential.  I redid the upholstery on my dining room chairs and I've stained furniture before, so it seemed like an easy enough fix.  I paid less than $5 for it!!











After I've taken the seat off...

So, I got out my mouse sander and went to town.  It was hard to get the stain off and I finally decided I'd done enough.  I was hoping that when I re-stained it, it would all blend in....













Here's the chair after I stained it. See how well it blended?...okay, so it didn't blend - guess it has that rustic, weathered look?  I already had stain from a bench I did a year and a half ago, so I just used it.  It's a bit of a cherry color.

When I took the upholstery off, I discovered that the old padding was pretty sad, so I bought new padding from JoAnn Fabric that was less than $4 after my 40% off coupon.  

And this is me going to town with the staple gun.  I have my knees on the wooden bottom of the seat and am stapling the fabric.  Maybe I didn't do the padding quite right or the fabric wasn't thick enough, put it puckers a bit from the staples.....again, the perfectionist in me is a little disappointed.  I bought 3/4 of a yard of fabric from Wal-mart for $1.50.

And lastly, we have the finished product!

If I had to do this again, I think I would have just painted the chair (not stained it).  It would have looked really cute painted white and distressed with a light blue upholstered seat, but that wouldn't fit into my decor.  Am I in love?  No.  Am I thrilled down to my toes about how it turned out?  No.  Did I learn a few things from this?  Yes.  The total cost for this chair was about $10, so I can't complain too much.  And, it satisfied the green in me - it's recycled.

My little green kid

I'm so excited to announce that my oldest son, Trent, has started his own blog, Diary of a Green Kid.    At our house, we make the effort where we can to be more environmentally conscious.  We use cloth napkins, we carpool, we recycle, and we buy a lot of things second hand (reuse).  I want my children to understand that we do these things to make less of an impact on our environment.  Trent loves the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and so now he has a diary of his own....a "green" one that's on the computer and not on paper.  I'm trying to have him post something "green" that he or our family does each day.  In the beginning, it will be easy.  Things like recycling our milk jugs, but after a while, we're going to have to get creative.  I'm very excited to see how this goes.  And our effort to be greener also help our effort to spend less.  Buying second hand, riding bikes, washing cloth napkins instead of buying paper napkins....these things are good for the budget too.  Follow his Diary to see how he's doing!